Rebirth
by Rayne Fenfire
Summary: Just a talk. Set right after the season 3 finale. I've been wondering how Hannibal and Will would encounter each other right after the fall and this is what I've come up with. It's more of a brief character study, though. Will's PoV.
**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters, no profit has, is or will be made of this - you know the drill.

 **xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox**

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Falling.

Crushing.

Sinking.

Drowning.

Until darkness is the only graspable thing left. I am familiar with the process. I've been through it. Over and over and over again. Only never this literally, physically. And it sure as hell has never felt so freeing before.

„ _It's beautiful."_ The words I spoke with the taste of blood on my lips now echo through my mind. It is. Beautiful. For the first time in my memory and probably ever I feel whole, complete. The adrenaline of the fight, the rush of power is vaporizing into the relief of survival and the peace of plain superiority just to condense again until I reache perfect clarity.

I know who I am. This is what I want. And I need to bring this to an end.

Even now I feel his grip. It's not a thing I can locate, it's just there. An omnipresence. A foreign matter. Stroking over my skin, lurking in the back of my mind, clawed into my soul. Even now that the wet darkness of the ocean is devouring me, washing the blood out of my cut-open body, pressing the air out of my lungs and my consciousness out of my brain – even now that I am fading, he is still there. Just like he's always been.

I can feel his embrace, his pull. Before I know it he tears me back onto the surface and sharp, icy air is shredding its way back into my lungs. I want to scream but the sound creeping out of my throat is an ugly, little cripple of a noise, caught somewhere between a gasp and a gag. The world is but one wavering blur. I cannot tell where I am but I know it's not the sea. I'm bathed in my own sweat, shaking, hyperventilating and painfully alive. Well. Not exactly what I've been aiming for...

I close my eyes again and hold my breath, focus on my lungs and force myself to breathe slowly, calmly. And it works. After all, this is hardly the first time, I wake up like this; haunting nightmares and distorted memories still lingering behind my eyes.

As I open them again, my surroundings slowly take form. It's a cabin of sorts, a rather small one at that or at least that's the impression I get. The scents of wood and salt hang in the air. It almost feels like home.

I fight myself into a sitting position but soon reach my limits and sink back against the bed's headboard as pain strikes through the entire right side of my body. I can hear myself whimper, breathing sharply as I wait for my body to calm down again. Shoulder, neck, face – even though they're covered underneath bandages, I can locate every single stab and cut the Red Dragon has inflicted on me. None of them were that severe and yet I am almost convinced they'd leave a few new scars. The thought evokes a disgust that has nothing to do with vanity, while my fingers wander without my command, tracing the one big scar that crosses my abdomen.

It's only then that I realize I'm half naked, wearing a pair of cotton pants that are not my own, lying in a comfortably dry bed that I don't recognize. Someone has taken care of me, patched me up quite skillfully. The gash in my cheek is even stitched. Doesn't take much guessing to know who that someone must have been.

"Glad to see you woke up after all." Hannibal's sophisticated voice pierces right through the veil of my vertigo. I see him standing in the door frame to the neighboring room as my vision's slowly getting clearer. Am I smelling coffee?

"Where are we?" The words feel foreign as they fight their way out of my sour throat; another small reminder that last night's events were real. It's been last night, hasn't it? I can't tell with certainty, time has always been quite a delicate topic to me. It's hard to keep track, when everything frequently stops just to crush onto you all at once within the blink of an eye. All or none.

Hannibal turns his head, casually inspecting the room as if he has never been here before, either. "Some fisherman's cottage, by the looks of it." His gaze finds mine. "How are you feeling, Will?"

"Dizzy" I reply as I try to sit up. I pull a face and hear myself groan as a pain I cannot quite locate strikes through my body. I feel the mattress giving in underneath Hannibal's weight as he takes a seat at the height of my shins. After trying to breathe away my discomfort I open my eyes to the doctor offering me a steaming mug of... tea? I stare at the mug. And I keep staring at it as I try to force some thoughts into existence, even though my mind remains agreeably silent.

I slowly look up to Hannibal's face, that has become a mask of that barely visible half-smile of his. "Take it. You've been asleep for over two days now. You're sure to be dehydrated and malnourished, despite all my efforts. There's a bottle of water on the nightstand" he briefly nods at the spot "and a breakfast waiting for you in the kitchen corner."

"Is any of this drugged?" I ask cynically but for some reason I can't bring myself to sound hostile.

My remark conjures an actual smirk on the doctor's features. "What a terrible thing to assume, Will."

Now _that_ makes me laugh. And then it made me whimper. He's right. I'm not in the best of conditions, but at least I don't seem to bleed out, so there's that. I raise my hand from my stomach and take the steaming mug from his hand. It is but a second that our fingers touch before I pull back with the mug and yet I can't help but feel a spark of a familiar and yet somewhat new intimacy in the casualness of the moment.

"I guess, I won't assume _some fisherman_ to be part of said breakfast then?" I go on, raising my eyebrows with a light smirk as I carefully put the mug to my lips. Frankly, I don't know what I'm doing here. Testing boundaries? Celebrating our survival?

"You're being awfully blunt right now" Hannibal remarks almost accusingly.

I snort mildly, smiling against the hot rim of the mug, my gaze dropping into a haze only I can see. We sit in silence until I can manage to take the first sip of tea, focused to concentrate the hot beverage on the healthy side of my mouth, and finally say: "I just want to know what happens next."

"What happens next should be our preparation to leave this cottage and in succession the country. The only reason we're not in custody in this very moment is the FBI assuming we've done that already. Under other circumstances, I might even take the compliment."

"You know very well, that that's not what I meant, Hannibal." Every time I find his name on my tongue, I realize how rarely I actually use it.

I watch him taking a sip from his own mug and notice with quite some envy that that's where the coffee-scent is coming from. I also notice how odd Hannibal Lecter looks in a sweater and a pair of jeans, especially when they're not tailored. "You're wondering whether or not I'll seek revenge after you pulled us over that cliff."

It's not a question. And I don't answer.

"I could've left you to drown in the ocean, after all. Nothing would've been easier. It might had even served your intentions. But I just couldn't allow it. Not after all that we've been through together."

"Why? Because of your _inconvenient compassion_ for me?" I ask with a mocking smile.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say Hannibal hesitated for a second before replying: "I might need to rephrase that." He didn't elaborate on it, though.

I sip from my tea. It is slowly reaching a more consumer-friendly temperature. I taste honey and the only reason I'm not demanding my share of coffee is the soothing this tea does to my sea-water-ridden throat. "I didn't have any intentions for beyond the falling" I finally say, looking up to meet the darkness of the doctor's eyes. I feel like this is the first time in... probably ever that none of us is playing any games on the other, so I might as well dwell on this transparency for as long as it may last. "I mean, part of the initial thought _was_ to kill us both, to bring an end to all this havoc. But now, that we're still alive I feel... relieved. And at peace." I frown at my own words and still can't help but smile at the truth of them.

"Do you still wish to kill me then?"

I cannot prey my eyes off of Hannibal's. "I do." I feel my features softening. There's no hatred, not even anger left inside of me. I don't want to kill him out of spite. I want to kill Hannibal Lecter because at this point I cannot allow anything or anyone else to become the cause of his end. And by the way he smiles back at me I know that he understands. "What about you? Do you still wish to devour me?"

"I do. More than ever."

"This is going to be a very interesting road trip, then" I conclude with his words resonating within me.

Hannibal raises his brows in mild surprise. "You are coming with me?"

"There's no turning back for me now. So where else would I go?" I reply with a decent amount of self-mockery.

"Very well" As Hannibal lifts himself from the bed I get a glimpse at his own struggle with his wounds but he's quick to conceal it. "Let's eat. And make our move as soon as possible."

I swing my legs over the bed's edge, immediately lowering my head into my hands as the vertigo worsens again. "So, you've planned it all out while I was passed out?" I groan, bracing myself to actually stand up in a few.

"Had to keep myself busy somehow. Say, Will, have you ever been to Paris?"

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 **xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox**

 _author's note:_ So this is probably the lamest Hannigram fic in existence, but I just had to get this convo out of my system. I just needed a small scene immediately after that fall and here it is. Dunno. Now that they had their moment of peace, I feel the urge to write something a lot darker with them. Huh. Will see.  
Anyhoo, all reviews are very much appreciated -hearts-


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